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Echo Dot tops Amazon's holiday sales season

Posted on Wednesday, December 27, 2017 by Elliot Roberts

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More than 1 billion items were ordered from small businesses and entrepreneurs worldwide this season, with more than 140 million of those over the five-day period from Thanksgiving (Nov. 23) through Cyber Monday (Nov. 27).

The Seattle-based web giant said Tuesday that its Prime members helped boost its holiday sales to record levels by buying stuff with the Alexa voice assistant that powers Amazon'sEcho speakers.

Amazon's peak day of customer fulfillment in 2017 was December 19.

Amazon is calling this holiday season its "biggest" ever, due in part to soaring Prime membership rates.

Across North America and the Europe, associates at 10 fulfillment centers picked, packed, and shipped more than one million customer packages in a single day.

More than 6,000 trailers and 32 Amazon Air planes were active in the US during the holiday season.

Echo Dot was the top-selling device in Amazon's 13 book stores. This holiday season, Amazon sales are expected to account for more than half of all online shopping sales - a sign that the e-tailer remains a top choice among consumers.

In a weird twist, however, Amazon added that the most popular item its customers purchased while using its Alexa-powered speakers was, in fact, the Echo Dot speaker.

On Prime Video, the most-watched TV season over the holidays was Amy Sherman-Palladino's "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" and the most-watched series overall was "The Grand Tour" (both Amazon Studios originals).

Customers shopped hundreds of Deals of the Day on Amazon.com throughout the holiday season.

Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999.